Thing # 13

Although I have used bookmarking sites in the past, I never really appreciated their full benefit, viewing them mainly as a personal convenience rather that a professional development and pedagogical tool.
At the beginning of my “Staff Development Summer 2010” I took a “Shifting Literacies” offering. As part of that training the facilitators asked that we create a Diigo account and experiment with the Highlighting and Sticky note functions. Having a real-time dialog with others reading the same thing was a new experience for me. I also like the having those comments saved for later review. Further, it is beneficial to be able to annotate a page and send it to colleagues for discussion. From there I created a Diigo group for the participants in that class and have joined other groups that provide updates as items are added. I have created numerous lists to further refine my online categorization. See them here.
After viewing Delicious (again) I haven’t been able to discover any aspect of the tool that compares to Diigo. For research capability, using ANY bookmarking tool seems absolutely vital. I see the process of categorizing sites into lists, creating tags, using tags to discover resources and commenting on what was found as important as any finished product. For general classroom use, the ability to pose questions in the text AND to view responses seems far preferable that just sharing sites.